This tutorial will walk you through recovering deleted, modified, or encrypted files using Shadow Volume Copies. This guide will outline using Windows Previous Versions and the program Shadow Explorer to restore files and folders as necessary.

In Windows it is possible to configure two different methods that determine whether an application should be allowed to run. The first method, known as blacklisting, is when you allow all applications to run by default except for those you specifically do not allow. The other, and more secure, method is called whitelisting, which blocks every application from running by default, except for those you explicitly allow.

Protecting your children while they are online can be a difficult and scary task for any parent. While it is important to introduce children to computers and the Internet, it is also just as important to do this in a safe environment. To help you with this is Family Safety, which is a parental control applications that monitors your children's online activity, and if necessary, controls what they can do on the computer. By using a tool like Family Safety a parent can feel comfortable allowing their child to use the computer and the Internet while knowing exactly what they are doing and where they are going.

Many organizations that use Remote Desktop Services or Terminal Services are not using a VPN connection before allowing connections to their in-house servers or workstations. If no VPN is required, this means that the Terminal Server or Remote Desktop is publicly visible and allows connections from anyone on the network and in most cases the Internet. This is a major security risk because it allows remote hackers to attempt to use password cracking attacks on your accessible servers in order to gain remote access. As Remote Desktop Services are configured by default to listen on TCP port 3389, all a hacker has to do is scan the Internet for computers that have that port open and then use a cracking program to try and crack the computer's accounts and passwords. This may seem like a hard task, but it is actually not difficult at all using free and publicly available tools.

A file extension, or file name extension, is the letters immediately shown after the last period in a file name. For example, the file extension.txt has an extension of .txt. This extension allows the operating system to know what type of file it is and what program to run when you double-click on it. There are no particular rules regarding how an extension should be formatted other than it must begin with a period and have at least one character after it. For the most part, file extensions consist of three characters, which are typically letters or digits, that textually represent the type of file it is. Some examples of file extensions include .txt, .mp3, .jpg, and .gz, which represent text files, mp3 files, jpeg image files, and files compressed with the gzip program. As you can see, the actual extension name gives clues as to the type of file it is.

One of the most important things a user can do to keep their computer secure is make sure they are using the latest security updates for Windows and their installed programs. Unfortunately, staying on top of these updates can be a time consuming and frustrating task when you have hundreds of programs installed on your computer. Thankfully, we have a utility called Secunia PSI, which is vital component for any Windows user's toolkit.

If you suspect that you have spyware installed on your computer, then an excellent tool to remove them is Ad-Aware SE. Follow the instructions below to learn how to use Ad-Aware SE to remove these programs from your computer. Word of warning, though, Spyware can sometimes be integrated tightly into software that you use, and if you remove the spyware, that software may not function correctly. So be careful as to what you remove.

Though Firewalls are necessary when your computer is connected to the Internet, they can cause problems trying to get Internet aware programs working properly. For example, if you wanted to host a game server on your computer, unless you configure your firewall correctly, outside users would not be able to connect to your server. This is because by default a Firewall blocks all incoming traffic to your computer. This causes a problem, because programs that require incoming connections will now not be reachable. To fix this, we need to open the specific Internet port that the program expects to receive incoming connections on. This tutorial will cover how to open specific ports for programs, or to open these ports globally using Zone Alarm.

Rootkits are scary and becoming a larger and larger menace to our computers every day. In the past if our computers were infected with a piece of malware, we simply removed it and we were clean of the infection. Now that rootkits are commonly bundled with other malware, this cleaning process has become even harder to do. This tutorial will cover how to use F-Secure Blacklight to scan your computer for rootkits and help you to remove them.